PRINTERS

Introduction

What is a Printer? In computing, a

printer is a peripheral which produces a hard copy of documents stored in electronic form.

Printer classificationTwo primary technologies used for printing

Printers

Impact PrintersDot-matrix printers, Daisy wheel printers

etc.

Non-impact PrintersLaser printers, Bubble-

jet printers etc.

Printer I/O Interfaces The most common I/O

interface for printers has been the parallel interface with a 36 - pin plug.

New printers and computers are using serial interface, especially Universal Serial Bus or Fire Wire.

Printer Languages Printer languages are

commands from the computer to the printer to tell the printer how to format the document being printed.

These commands manage font size, graphics, compression of data sent to the printer, color, etc.

Printer Qualities Colour Resolution Speed Memory

Dot-matrix printer

Daisy wheel printer

Ink jet printer

Bubble jet

printer

Thermal printer

Laser printer

commonly used printers and their technologies

Dot matrix printer Extremely useful when the

actual printed content is much more important than the quality of the print.

Commonly used for printing invoices, purchase orders, shipping forms, labels, and other multi-part forms.

Can print through multi-part forms in a single pass, allowing them to produce more pages than even high-speed laser printers.

Use a set of closely spaced pins and a ribbon to print letters or other characters on a page.

These printers actually impact the page to print a character, much like a typewriter.

Dot-matrix printers vary in terms of speed and the number of pins (9-24) they have.

They can run at a speed anywhere between 50 and 500 CPS (Characters Per Second).

Dot matrix printer

Daisy wheel printer

Able to produce letter- high quality text (unlike dot matrix printers, which created fuzzy, low-quality characters).

These printers were slow, couldn't print graphics, and often incredibly loud.

Simply a metal or plastic disk sliced into thin strips toward the center.

A raised letter or character resided at the outer end of each strip.

To print, the printer would spin the wheel to the correct character, and a hammer would strike it, forcing the character through an inked ribbon and onto the paper.

Daisy wheel printer

Inkjet printer Maintaining excellent quality

at an affordable price.

Capable of producing high quality print which almost matches the quality of a laser printer.

Almost all ink-jets offer a color option as standard, in varying degrees of resolution etc.

Ink-jets printers spray ionized tiny drops of ink onto a page to create an image.

This is achieved by using magnetized plates which direct the ink's path onto the paper in the desired pattern.

A standard ink-jet printer has a resolution of 300 dots per inch.

Inkjet printer

Inkjet printer

Bubble jet printer The principal difference

between bubble-jet printers and ink-jet printers is that

bubble-jet printers use - special heating

elements to prepare ink,

ink-jet printers use - piezoelectric crystals to prepare ink.

Ink bubble forms inside the nozzle and a tiny drop of ink is expelled at high speed.

When the drop hits a paper surface, it forms a round dot of even density and color.

The heating element is switched on and off in response to data from a computer, which processes the information from an image file.

Bubble jet printer

To speed things up, use multiple nozzles for each color of ink and combines all the nozzles into a single print head.

High quality, Speed and Low cost.

Bubble jet printer

Thermal printer A thermal print head melts

wax-based ink from the transfer ribbon onto the paper, when cool it’s permanent.

These printers print images

as dots, which means that images must be dithered first. As a result, images are not quite photo-realistic, although they are very good.

Don't require special paper (e.g. in dye transfer printers) and they are faster, quit and economical etc.

Commercial applications – filling stations pumps, point of sales systems and voucher printers etc.

Thermal printer

Laser printer Operate by shining a

laser beam to produce an image on a drum.

Then the drum is rolled through a pool, or reservoir, or toner, and the electrically charged portions of the drum pick up ink.

Finally, using a combination of heat and pressure, the ink on the drum is transferred onto the page.

Laser printers print very fast, and the supply cartridges work a long time.

Color laser printers use the same toner-based printing process as black and white (B/W) laser printers, except that they combine four different toner colors.

Laser printer

Special types of printersPlotters

Label Printers

CD/DVD Printers

Multifunctional Printers

Versa-laser Printer

3D Printers

Plotters Large-scale printers

those are very accurate at reproducing line drawings.

Commonly used for technical drawings such as engineering drawings or architectural blueprints etc.

The two basic types of plotters flatbed plotters drum plotters.

Label Printer The smartest way to

print labels one at a time. 

The printers allow easy installation. 

Can  get high-quality, professional results every time

CD/DVD Printer Provide a low cost

way to create professional printed CD-R and DVD-R.

Can print directly on the CD or DVD surface.

With high speed and can print full color image.

Multifunctional Printers A machine combined

top-quality color ink-jet or laser printing with PC faxing, color copying, color scanning and telephoning etc.

All in one, convenient, space-saving machine.

Versa-LaserTM Printer

Peripheral tool that can transform images or drawings on your computer screen into real items made out of an amazing variety of materials.

Wood, Plastic, Fabric, Paper etc.

Versa-Laser™  is a brand name. (Universal Laser Systems Inc.)

3D Printers Creates physical

models directly from computer-aided design system (CAD) and other digital data.

The printer is fast, versatile and simple.

Allowing engineers to produce a range of concept models and functional test parts quickly and inexpensively.

SummaryWhat is a printer ?

Printer classification

Printer I/O interface

Printer languages

Printer qualities

commonly used printers and their technologies

Special types of printers

Group members

- IIT JANUARY INTAKE – 2009 -

Basura Ramanayake 2008082

Isuru Samarasinghe 2008098

Rishikeshan Parasuraman 2008086

Udayashangari Sivaji 2008085

Thank You